Meet Maven: The Telehealth Pioneer For Women

Kate Ryder always knew she wanted to build a company to help change the world. The problem was, she didn’t quite know what problem to tackle first. It was only after many of her friends got married, started families and she became the ear to their woes about the lack of quality women's resources in the current healthcare landscape did she come up with the idea for Maven.

Maven is helping to pioneer telehealth, a budding industry that remotely connects users with healthcare providers via Facetime appointments. Where Maven differs from other platforms is that it places its focus on women's health and has a relationship-driven approach. Designed for women, Maven offers healthcare providers - a majority of whom are women themselves - that range from MD, NP, physical therapist, midwife, nutritionist, mental health therapist, and more. Essentially, any provider a woman aged 20-50 might touch is available on the app.

Maven works nationwide and is able to prescribe medication over the app in five states currently and all states by 2016. There are over 200 providers currently available on the app, vetted and accepted by Maven’s clinical advisory board, which is composed of highly distinguished members from the medical community. And while Maven works out of network, appointments start as low as $18 for 10 minutes with a nurse practitioner and $35 for 10 minutes with a doctor - price tags that are actually cheaper than the average co-pay.

To date, Maven has achieved a 25% rebooking rate, which is far above the industry average of 2%.

I had a chance to connect with Kate Ryder to talk about Maven, the size of the telehealth industry, and her plans for the rest of the year.

Alexander Taub: How difficult was the transition from being a journalist to becoming a founder?

Kate Ryder: There are actually more similarities to journalism and entrepreneurship than you would think. Working as a journalist has definitely helped me learn how to operate in unstructured environments and inspire others to get excited about bigger ideas. I also have a network of really smart advisers—kind of like my sources, when I was a journalist—who can help steer me toward the right answers. I should also mention that my Dad is an entrepreneur and I worked for a brief time in venture capital-- both of these things have also helped with the transition.

Taub: How big is the telehealth industry?

Ryder: You've asked the billion dollar question! According to the American Telemedicine Association, it's one of the most frequently asked questions they get. But it's also one of the most difficult to answer. From the ATA: "Estimates on the market size for telemedicine vary widely, depending on each analyst's precise definition of telemedicine. While they can't agree on a single number, one area where all research firms concur is that the telemedicine market is growing rapidly."

Taub: You focus on women’s health. Do you see Maven expanding into male health in the near future?

Ryder: Most people don't know this, but women control 80% of healthcare decisions in the United States. Maven's mission is to support the female healthcare consumer navigating our complicated healthcare system. This is why Maven Practitioners are either specialized in women's health or family health. We do have a few men using our platform today-- single Dads or men who need a basic prescription for something. If we go into men's health specifically, we would likely create a cousin brand-- because we would have to recruit another set of providers and it would look somewhat different.

Taub: What are some of the best lessons you’ve learned while building Maven?

Ryder: Nothing compares to working with great people in an industry that's craving innovation. Meeting so many different healthcare providers who are incredibly committed to women's and family health has been inspiring but also humbling—as we really want to do well by our practitioners and help give them the opportunity to change a broken system. The challenge is working in an industry that is fraught with regulation and red tape and misaligned incentives. That being said, I’m optimistic that we're coming onto the scene at just the right time, based on the traction we are getting with Maven.

Taub: What does the rest of 2015 look like? Anything big you are working on?

Ryder: We're launching a new feature this winter that we're incredibly excited about. Our practitioners helped us think through this feature- it's all about how they can build better and enduring relationships with their Maven patients. We've been working on the user experience and designs all summer-- now it's under development. We're also nationalizing the business so we'll be in every state in 2016. Right now we're national for our pregnancy and wellness offerings, but limited to 5 states where we can write prescriptions (New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Washington DC, and Maryland). In 2016 we'll be able to prescribe in every state where e-prescriptions are allowed.

Taub: Anything else going on that you’d like to share?

Ryder: We just launched our social innovation arm, Access for All. I am incredibly excited about this. Every time a woman buys an appointment on Maven, The Maven Foundation donates $1 to an appointment for a woman in need. But we're not just donating money to other nonprofits. We're actually delivering the care ourselves. Our first initiative is around breastfeeding. At the beginning of every month, our four nonprofit partners get a certain allocation of appointments to hand out to the lower-income women they work with and these women see Maven IBCLCs for free via Maven's platform.

I am the co-founder of SocialRank and previously led business development and partnerships for online integrations at Dwolla, a payments startup based in Iowa, as well as for Aviary, a NY-based startup that provides a photo editing API for web and mobile devices. I'm active...